An apple a day... or in this case, a grape.

A while back Andrew sent me a great article discussing the traits of a good blog. Lots of obvious-only-after-pointed-out suggestions, but the Cliff Notes boil down to: what makes a blog good is... wait for it... good content. Why else would you want to return? And if you don't return, what's the point?  

I heart Coda 1.5

I've steadily been moving more and more project development over to Coda^*, the wondertasbulous development app from the rockin' folks at Panic.

They recently released version 1.5, with a couple details that will translate into even faster development for me.

At a glance you can now tell whether a file open in the Edit window is a local file or a file on the server. When you've got a dozen tabs open looking at code that affects different parts of a site and need to switch around quickly, this is a huge help. Previously you had to mouse over the tab and wait for the tool tip to display to know where the file resided.


By far my most favorite-ist addition is the ability to Reverse Publish a file from the server. This nearly made me swoon. Instead of making sure I'm in the right directory on both sides, I can now simply pull a file from anywhere on the server and know I've got the latest and greatest locally in the right place. Bliss. (Yes. I know. Subversion or Git would address this issue, too. Just settle down over there.)

Next on the wish list: Can we have some view of Site profiles that isn't fancy "taped up" pieces of paper? It's sexy and all, but when you've got a ton of 'em, it's a bit difficult to navigate.

 

No pressure or anything...

I met with a friend's daughter this week to give her some writing pointers for her college essay. She's a dynamo: bilingual, into extra-curriculars, top-shelf grades and scores. She's got a great story to tell any admissions office, which is why her level of worry surprised me.   

An Olympic Question

Here's a question for the Internets. The Olympics showcase not only the most amazing physical specimens from around the world, but typically also demonstrate the innovation, science and technical expertise that goes into training, scoring and timing these athletes.

Michel Phelps' 1/100th of a second win in the 100 butterfly is a testament to the microscopic differences in first and second place at the highest levels of competition. In track and field the fastest humans on land wear hi-tech, skin-tight suits and single-use shoes designed to ride the fine line between weight and performance.

Which brings me to my question: Why do they still safety-pin numbers to these athletes? Are you telling me the handful of top-line equipment makers can't get together and figure out a standard way to embed their numbers into their suits? Short of that, are safety-pinned pieces of whatever the best technology on offer to determine who's who in a given event?

Maybe it makes no difference. Heck Usain Bolt didn't seem too bothered, his showboating at the end of the 100m slowed his time much more than any little piece of material would and he still coasted to a world record. To me, it just seems like buying an expensive Italian sports car, and then putting one of those window-mounted flags on it.
 

Movable Type 4.2 / Movable Type Pro Released

Community features & social networking! Threaded comments! Caching! Server-side include generation! Smart and helpful tweaks to the admin interface!

Can you tell I'm excited? The timing on this release couldn't have been better. Thanks, Six Apart!

Movabletype.org: 4.2 is here!